1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication apparatuses, such as wireless terminals or cellular phone terminals, and to communication methods performed between communication apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
In social network services (SNS), such as Mixi or Gree, communities constituted by so-called acquaintances of acquaintances (friends of friends) are formed.
Concerning acquaintances of acquaintances, as a matching information retrieval method, a method is described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-169918. In this method, in order to retrieve information that matches conditions requested by a user from among various types of information stored in a computer system and to provide the retrieved information to the user, a server system retrieves information owned by an acquaintance of the user or owned by an acquaintance of an acquaintance of the user and provides the retrieved information to the user.
However, in the method described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-169918, although a user is able to acquire information owned by an acquaintance of an acquaintance of the user, the user is not able to directly communicate with the acquaintance of the acquaintance of the user (that is, a person who knows an acquaintance of the user).
For certain purposes, many users want to communicate with other people who are not immediate acquaintances. For example, when people who are not immediately acquainted with each other pass by each other or get close to each other outside home or at travel destinations, if they are able to directly communicate with each other, new encounters and experiences can be realized.